New allegations on BO

[bobbyw8469]

Originally Posted by kateighty

Well of course. It's just dominating everything else! I'm interested in reading all of this but it's getting overwhelming. I do appreciate though what the OGs have been doing in terms of posting the updated lists that might otherwise get lost in the mix. Thanks for that it really is appreciated.

Agreed. The word "overwhelming" is an understatement.

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by commishbob

This is what I have done on the VERY rare instances where I submitted a card. I bought a raw '58 Mantle that seemed too nice for the price and I requested only the Authorized 'grade', which it got. I only wanted to know it was a legit card. When it came back it came out of the slab and into the set binder.

In my case, it was an altered card - I know because I'm the one who did the altering. When I was younger and more foolish, I removed a stain on the corner of my '56 Mantle that I have had since I was 14. Because I'm an amateur and not a card doctor - what I actually did was to trade the stain for paper loss on that corner. All these years later I don't really care - I did it to make the card look better for ME (it does, and was not high-grade to begin with...) and have no intent to ever sell it or try to commit some type of fraud. The card is sentimental to me and normally raw cards like that stay exactly that way in my collection - but I did want this particular one in a slab for later when it's passed down to my girls. I had submitted to SGC more than a decade ago, not having any clue at that time about alterations and the protocol there - and of they of course did not grade it, sent it back rejected due to "questionable color" on that corner. It's not really color, but just the underlying card stock showing through. For what it is worth, I've seen other cards with similar paper loss in mid-grade numbered holders with both PSA and SGC - but again since I had no intentions to sell the card - I didn't care. Finally got around to it and sent it off late last year and requested just "A", which SGC obliged. I had the card back in less than a week.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by Leon

Cut and pasted from the SGC website. Their website could be wrong but it seems to contradict what you said? This is all of the verbiage for their ALT grade.

SGC REJECTION CODES
A
Altered (ALT)

In actual practice, SGC uses A for any card they won't give a number grade even if it isn't altered. It's possible to choose A or just getting a card back unslabbed. When it isn't slabbed, you actually get an explanation.

This one has very rough factory cuts top and bottom. I was a bit miffed when it came back, but after some reflection, I can see why they wouldn't slab it. To most people any oddity seems like alterations. (And with the current stuff going on, that isn't likely to change)



Out of the few cards I've had rejected I got
Miscut top and bottom -shown above
Min size - a puzzler, as it's less short than another card in the same group was narrow (a regular card that was very nearly AB narrow.
Trimmed - Yep, actually trimmed on all four borders. picked it in a rush to get one last good looking card to make 10 for a special. Totally blew that one.

[Fuddjcal]

Originally Posted by pgconboy

The Wagner just got pulled. Not a good sign it was even listed.

Thanks, That's one! A few hundred more to go and we're home freeeeeeeeeee

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by steve B

When it isn't slabbed, you actually get an explanation.

LOL, I will have to look but could swear that is the same handwriting on the rejection slip I originally had for my Mantle. It was some time ago...

[Promethius88]

Out of curiosity, where has all the money gone? Has it all gone to Moser or stayed with PWCC?

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by Promethius88

Out of curiosity, where has all the money gone? Has it all gone to Moser or stayed with PWCC?

Just follow the money...LOL. Isn't that what Deepthroat told Bob Woodward...

[aloondilana]

Originally Posted by swarmee

My latest email to Steve Sloan (Cc: Betsy):

How do you write Steve Sloan an email blaming Brent?

I'm not saying Brent is innocent or guilty, but my god.
PSA is much more at fault than anyone who messed with these cards.

PSA is paid for their service to accurately grade cards.
PSA graded these "trainwrecks" I place all the blame on PSA!

PSA is who put these cards back on the street with a much higher value.

Again, The complete blame is PSA
Either there is a very crooked grader on PSA's payroll or PSA is deeply involved.
Either way, an email to Steve Sloan is kind of laughable.

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by aloondilana

How do you write Steve Sloan an email blaming Brent?

I'm not saying Brent is innocent or guilty, but my god.
PSA is much more at fault than anyone who messed with these cards.

PSA is paid for their service to accurately grade cards.
PSA graded these "trainwrecks" I place all the blame on PSA!

PSA is who put these cards back on the street with a much higher value.

Again, The complete blame is PSA
Either there is a very crooked grader on PSA's payroll or PSA is deeply involved.
Either way, an email to Steve Sloan is kind of laughable.

Agreed. Watch the 30-for-30 short, "Holy Grail." As Keith O. says, "the expertise is the fraud." What expertise? At best if you don't believe they were knowingly complicit in this type of thing - it's sloppy and careless. Joe Blow grader (who we know nothing about, have no qualifications on...) looks at X card for 37 seconds and decides it's a PSA 6 because he cannot see the subtle work that was done to get rid of marks or fix corners from when the card was a PSA 3 or a 4. What is professional or expert about that? Nothing.

[slidekellyslide]

I personally don't believe PSA is involved in anything other than being negligent in their grading. Do I think they have knowledge that PWCC, Moser and the rest of the bums were sending in doctored cards? Nope. I think they have a bunch of overworked graders whose eyes glaze over after an hour or so of work.

[aloondilana]

Like button pressed to Mr. Collins message above this

[perezfan]

Originally Posted by slidekellyslide

I personally don't believe PSA is involved in anything other than being negligent in their grading. Do I think they have knowledge that PWCC, Moser and the rest of the bums were sending in doctored cards? Nope. I think they have a bunch of overworked graders whose eyes glaze over after an hour or so of work.

If the reason is simply ineptitude, then there is NO reason anyone should be sending them their cards. Any novice could do an equal or better job of grading. At least they could be perceived as competent, if these hundreds of mistakes were intended fraud. Not sure which is worse...

[bounce]

Originally Posted by slidekellyslide

I personally don't believe PSA is involved in anything other than being negligent in their grading. Do I think they have knowledge that PWCC, Moser and the rest of the bums were sending in doctored cards? Nope. I think they have a bunch of overworked graders whose eyes glaze over after an hour or so of work.

So you don't think PSA knew who Moser was? Myself and others find that very hard, if not impossible, to believe.

Did they take submissions from him directly? If they did, then they at least knew him as a customer. I suppose they could say they didn't know his reputation, but again that's pretty tough to believe.

If they would not accept submissions from him, then they definitely knew him and his reputation. It then wouldn't have taken much to figure out someone else was submitting on his behalf.

Which one of those is worse? In either scenario, they were looking the other way in some form.

[jad22]

Originally Posted by slidekellyslide

I personally don't believe PSA is involved in anything other than being negligent in their grading. Do I think they have knowledge that PWCC, Moser and the rest of the bums were sending in doctored cards? Nope. I think they have a bunch of overworked graders whose eyes glaze over after an hour or so of work.

It's people performing an manual visual inspection. They will miss lots of things until they take out the human element. I agree with you, their eyes probably do glaze over after an hour.

[MULLINS5]

I said this over on BO, but I suspect PSA gave PWCC a quicker service because of their business relationship. The cards were probably mailed directly to someone high up (Orlando, Sloan, etc) and then they handed them over to grading to avoid log time. The grader probably knew it was PWCC and ran the cards through. I feel like it's a matter of PSA mistrusting PWCC. I can't see PSA knowingly grading altered cards or there being someone on the inside participating in criminal activity. Of course, I could be wrong, but this is what I'm going with until more about PSA's involvement comes out. I'm still a customer and will continue to send cards into PSA/DNA for authentication and grading. I was very close to pulling the trigger on a PSA 9 1979 OPC Gretzky on eBay before I knew what was happening and will likely not be buying anything already graded of value for awhile.

[drcy]

Originally Posted by slidekellyslide

I personally don't believe PSA is involved in anything other than being negligent in their grading. Do I think they have knowledge that PWCC, Moser and the rest of the bums were sending in doctored cards? Nope. I think they have a bunch of overworked graders whose eyes glaze over after an hour or so of work.

Never been one of the PSA defenders, but I work on the assumption that it is bad grading rather than nefarious intent with PSA.

[Promethius88]

I agree that I don't think that PSA was knowingly involved and I also know there are others that disagree. I do believe that it is a most likely inexperienced, overworked graders that aren't catching the alterations. I also agree that that is not acceptable. That is why I believe PSA is most likely taking their time with any public response. I think in the end they will have to come out and admit to missing these alterations that were done(but will most likely point out how many they caught to help their image) and are probably trying to come up with their best position on how they are going to handle returns(if they do) and how much accountability they will have to accept. Personally, I like that they are waiting as opposed to others involved trying to get out in front and post ridiculous reasoning or doing interviews only digging bigger holes for themselves.
I've read post after post on this, opinion after opinion and I respect everyone's opinion even if I disagree with some. After trying to let this soak in and look at all angles, I have a question or two...some have been briefly touched upon.
As someone mentioned, it's easy, after all of the investigation work to see the before and after of these affected cards so in hindsight we can say that all of this work should have been caught. I also know others have mentioned measuring, blacklights, ect that should be used by TPG's to catch them all.
But, has anyone taken a good look at these cards in person...without having the before pics to look at, and inspected them to see the alterations? I mean, are the actual alterations easy to spot, in hand, if you weren't aware?
I'm personally for TPG's having a pics go along with all cert numbers. I know that would take up a huge amount of space for a company to store them all but would be helpful in the future. Obviously not going to work for the cards already graded but maybe going forward.
Next, and maybe last for now, but does the downfall of the TPG's really do any good? I know, I know, some of you despise them and all they stand for or perceive them to be the anti-Christ, that's fine, I respect your opinion. But on the flipside, we all know alterations and doctoring were going on years before the concept of TPG, hence their creation. That and nobody can agree on the actual grade of a card. But there have to be a lot of cards out there that have been worked on that have not gotten past the graders over the years.
I know the list of bad cards from Moser and others is extensive, but nothing to the extent of stuff that is floating out there from the guys that were altering cards at their kitchen tables in 60's, 70's and 80's or even before that. I would still have more confidence in picking something up slabbed than I might buying it raw at a show from an unknown dealer. Either way it's a gamble, don't get me wrong.
While this is a huge problem, I would like to think it only affects a very small percentage of cards that are in holders today....call me an optimist. Or, you can just call me naive and believe a conspiracy theory that every card submitted is bad and not a single card being slabbed can be trusted. In that case, I don't know why you even collect cards cause it can't be that fun for you.
I will add this, while I collect many other cards, my main focus is the 1962 Jell-O set. Since there are so few collectors and even fewer numerical grades given to cards from that set, I'm pretty confident that all of mine are legit and I don't worry about them at all. You don't worry about a trimmed card when it was made to be cut by hand in the first place!!!
Finally, while I don't have the time or patience to read EVERY post on BO, much appreciation goes out to the person or persons doing the work out there to expose this. Frankly, I don't know how someone would have that much time on their hands to do it, but hats off!

[steve B]

Originally Posted by jchcollins

LOL, I will have to look but could swear that is the same handwriting on the rejection slip I originally had for my Mantle. It was some time ago...

It very well could be, that card went through SGC quite a while ago. I just looked at scans I uploaded of other cards in the same batch, and they were graded in either 2009 or 2010.

[steve B]

I'll say it, I don't think PSA isn't directly involved. I haven't seen any claims that the same sort of incompetence is found with submissions from people who aren't altering cards.
Unless by some magic happening, the same grossly incompetent grader gets all the submissions from the trimmers.

If I sent in 100 trimmed cards, I believe most if not all would be caught. Somehow the guys trimming manage to get cards through regularly that don't even meet the min size. My daughter is 8 and I could teach her to reject those.

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

Originally Posted by steve B

I'll say it, I don't think PSA isn't directly involved. I haven't seen any claims that the same sort of incompetence is found with submissions from people who aren't altering cards.
Unless by some magic happening, the same grossly incompetent grader gets all the submissions from the trimmers.

If I sent in 100 trimmed cards, I believe most if not all would be caught. Somehow the guys trimming manage to get cards through regularly that don't even meet the min size. My daughter is 8 and I could teach her to reject those.

You're just not as good at it.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by Aquarian Sports Cards

You're just not as good at it.

Other than a few hostess cards when I was a kid, I haven't done that. I still have them, but I doubt they'd grade, my pocketknife was pretty dull...

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by perezfan

If the reason is simply ineptitude, then there is NO reason anyone should be sending them their cards. Any novice could do an equal or better job of grading. At least they could be perceived as competent, if these hundreds of mistakes were intended fraud. Not sure which is worse...

Rock and a hard place. Not sure which I am rooting for honestly.

[barrysloate]

I don't think PSA was a part of any nefarious scheme, but I haven't ruled out the possibility of a rogue grader. This is pure speculation, but with so much money to be made so easily, by merely bumping the grade of a card, you can't assume it's impossible.

A half grade bump on a high grade 52T Mantle will put both of your kids through four years of college. In what other industry can that much money be made so effortlessly?

[swarmee]

Originally Posted by aloondilana

How do you write Steve Sloan an email blaming Brent?

Investigative technique to see who will flip on who first. I wanted him to put pressure on PWCC to END ALL THEIR CURRENT AUCTIONS before PSA's liability continues to increase by more sales of altered cards in PSA slabs.